Readers' comments

Good piece, but is it truly fair to say this is a new approach to drug discovery? Captopril, based on the teprotide peptide from the venom of the Brazilian pit viper (as stated in article) was first synthesized in 1975, and even that work was based on findings dating from the 1950's. Lucky breaks and inspiration from nature are the cornerstones of drug design.

"There are no poisons, only poisonous doses." Well, that's not exactly what Paracelsus, credited as the founder of modern toxicology, actually said. Instead, he said "ALL things are poisons. There is NO THING that is NOT a poison. Only the dose distinguishes a poison from a remedy." (Translated from the original German.) Philosophically, it makes a difference if you start by stating up front that everything can be bad for your health, rather than assuming that poisons are somehow exceptional. Everything, water and air included, is toxic at high doses. Yes, you can commit suicide by drinking water or breathing pure oxygen. For some substances—useful drugs and foods, and, yes, air and water—there are positive benefits to health when consumed in low enough doses. For other substances, no benefit can be derived at sublethal doses. Medicinal chemists have always followed this precept. Drugs from snake venom? Old news. Really, really old news.

It is very interesting evolution that man created the a-bomb before the cruise-missle. That we learned to wipe out a whole city before we learned how to pinpoint and hit a target with great accuracy is fasinating. Much in the same way with medicine, we leanred to use chemo and antitbiotics (wide-ranging pot-shots against diseases, in effect burn the whole forest methods) before we finally uncovered venom as medicine's newest 'cruise-missle'.

Traditional Indian medicine has far more of such examples. This is not "fairly new". It may be new in western medicine. snake venom is an ingredient in many ayurvedic medicines. More examples, which are yet unresearched by the western scientific community includes navapashana, (the nine poisons). navapashana has 9 deadly poisons made in the form of statue. milk or water pored over the idol is then consumed to cure many diseases.

My concern is whether the poisin from farmed venom has the sanme potent characteristics of the reptiles in the wild.
Users of the diabetic drugs created fromlzards thus farmed, have had severe side effects, e.g. weighyt gains.
Having said thatany research should be investigated thoroughly ,as Dr. Goldacre brings out in his book " Bad Pharma "
Time will tell.